Now the octogenarian has a new career in mind
He’s set to celebrate
his 80th birthday but
Jimmie Macgregor is
far from over the hill
The hair might be silver-white and the face deeply lined but the mischievous grin and the quick wit are undimmed – so much so that it’s hard to believe Jimmie Macgregor will be 80 years old in four days’ time.
Sharp as a tack and as trim as ever, Macgregor is the least an unlikely octogenarian who still gets up the hills, although he admits “the knees are creaking a bit”, and now he’s now planning a third career.
The first was as one half of Robin Hall and Jimmie Macgregor, the legendary folk duo. The second was as television’s guide to the great outdoors, the West Highland Way in particular, and as host of Macgregor’s Gathering, the BBC Radio Scotland morning programme that was the epitome of the rural eclectic. The third will see him tell his own story in a one-man show with music.
Hall and Macgregor were big from the 1960s to the 1980s. They filled every major concert hall and theatre in Britain.
On occasion they had The Beatles as a support act. But it all began in Springburn, Glasgow, 80 years ago. Brought up in a tenement and then a council house, “which was Shangri-la by comparison”, he was introduced early to music, mostly through his singing relatives. “Our house was a focus for people to gather and make music,” he says. “I had aunties and cousins who were chorus girls.”
Young Macgregor was already a keen student of music and would complain that all the aunties were doing harmonies and no-one was doing the song.
Fast forward to 1948 when Macgregor
was doing his national service. He applied for foreign service but ended up in an orderly room in Sussex, far from any mud and bullets.
“I did some fighting but it was in the boxing ring. If you did boxing you were excused other tasks such as peeling mounds of potatoes or painting coal white. I enjoyed boxing until I faced a few guys good enough to give me a sore face, so I chucked it.
“National service was a waste of my time and the country’s money. But I did spend many hours doing pen-and-wash drawings of the Romney Marsh countryside.”
It was these drawings that got Macgregor his ticket into Glasgow School of Art, even though he had left school at 15 without any qualifications.
Macgregor studied ceramics but also spent much time playing guitar and pursuing folk music with contemporaries such as Josh McRae. He taught a girl called Annie Wilson to sing The Calton Weaver, the chorus of which contains the words “nancy” and “whisky”. The young lady became a singer under the name Nancy Whisky and will feature later in this story.
After graduating from art school in the mid-1950s, Macgregor literally pottered about and did some teaching. But his heart was with the music. Most weekends he would hitch-hike from Glasgow to London, where the folk scene afforded more opportunity for an aspiring musician.
He eventually moved to London. He frequented the pubs and clubs where talent could flourish. Macgregor remembers a young fellow doing a particularly nauseating version of the recitative Deck Of Cards, but Tommy Steele eventually prospered.
Macgregor was immersed in music. Folk, skiffle, blues, everything. Robin Hall, another young Scot, arrived on the London scene and they both made their way to a youth festival in Vienna. Though not yet a duo, they were put on stage together.
They received praise from Paul Robeson, the black American Communist singing legend. Macgregor recalls: “I said to Robin, ‘If we’re getting a pat on the back from Paul Robeson, maybe we should give it a go.’”
The break came when their London agent phoned the Tonight programme on BBC television and said what they needed for their Burns Night show was a song by the bard – and he had just the two Scottish singers to do the job.
“The BBC said OK, they would give us a chance. But our agent was lying. We didn’t know any Burns song in its entirety. We learned Rantin Rovin Robin in the taxi on the way to the studio.
“It went down well. The BBC gave us a further week’s trial and we ended up doing the programme for four years.”
Tonight was a daily magazine programme, the pioneer and pathfinder of the genre. It was a mixture of current affairs and personality interviews done live and on the hoof. It was required watching. A bit like The One Show might be if it was any good.
“Tonight was staffed by top newspaper journalists who had been poached to TV,” says Macgregor. “People like Cliff Michelmore, Derek Hart, Kenneth Allsop, Fyfe Robertson, and Magnus Magnusson.”
A woman called Grace Wyndham Goldie was in charge of Tonight. “She was brilliant. I said to Magnus I thought she was quite ethereal. Magnus explained that she was actually quite pished some of the time.”
Hall and Macgregor had been used to playing to 50 people in a folk cellar. Now they had a nightly audience of 10 million. They became so well-known they couldn’t go to work by tube as they kept getting recognised.
With their TV fame came a series of lucrative bookings. They were big in the world of showbiz. But they stayed close to their roots. “There we were on national TV doing daft Glasgow street songs such as Ye Canny Shove Yer Granny Aff A Bus and Last Night There Was A Murder In The Fish Shop.”
The duo’s Scottish repertoire was extensive and the British audience was treated to such concepts as weans wi’ a ruckle o’ banes getting double-chinned from sookin coulter’s candy.
But, but they were also well versed in world music. When Jomo Kenyatta, president of a newly independent Kenya, appeared on Tonight, he was serenaded with an African freedom song.
The folk duo pair sang at least one song per programme, and were also on standby in case of technical hitches. “We could be called upon to sing at a moment’s notice and then told to cut after one verse. Or asked to sing at some length if the situation demanded.”
At a time when British broadcasting was staid – newsreaders wore dinner jackets on radio – the Tonight programme was what we now call laidback.
“There was a minor brouhaha when Richard Dimbleby, presenter of the BBC flagship Panorama, was inadvertently caught on camera combing his hair,” recalls Macgregor. “The next night Tonight opened with Cliff Michelmore cutting his toenails. It was fun and we met some interesting people.”
Almost every personality passing through London appeared on the show and, being a sociable Scot, Macgregor made a point of talking to them in the green room.
“I had a chat with Edward G Robinson about his collection of Impressionist paintings, which was the finest in Hollywood,” says Macgregor. “He asked me how I knew about it. I said I must have read about it somewhere and that his wife wasn’t too pleased about how much he spent on paintings instead of a bigger house and swimming pool.
“I noticed he had a hearing aid and asked him just how deaf he was. He said it depended on who he was talking to.”
Macgregor also fell into conversation with Jock Mahoney, better known as Tarzan from the movies. “He looked about nine feet tall in his cowboy boots and 10-gallon hat. He told me he was a pro footballer who had been chosen for the role because of his physique. He was telling me that he was 6ft 6in, weighed 230lb and had a 47in chest, when he was called to do his interview with Cliff Michelmore. Ten minutes later he returned and took up the conversation with, ‘As I was saying, I had a 47in chest…’”
One night in the studio, Macgregor was approached by John Wayne. “He said he had heard that his interviewer liked to take down guys like him. Here was John Wayne, looking for reassurance from me. If I was two foot taller I would have clapped him on the heid and told him not to worry.”
Hall and Macgregor appeared on various programmes on the ITV network. Southern TV in deepest England showcased the duo. Manfred Mann was the supporting act.
They appeared in concert with such American blues legends as Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. Macgregor says: “I was young but I was never fazed by performing alongside the great names of blues and jazz music. I suppose it was a certain insouciance. Or brass neck, as we call it in Glasgow.”
Hall’s superb voice and Macgregor’s musical versatility ensured they survived in hallowed company. They also managed to put Scottish music in an authentic context which did not include kilts and velvet Prince Charlie jackets.
Ironically, Hall and Macgregor were later to host the White Heather Club, when the heuchter-teuchter show was popular not just in Scotland but in all of the UK.
Their opus of 20 albums became a resource for other Scottish folk singers. Inevitably their success led to accusations of selling out by hairy-sweatered if not entirely hairy-ersed traditionalists. “Doing down people who are successful is not a peculiarly Scottish trait but we are quite good at it,” says Macgregor. “I used to get criticised for changing arrangements of traditional songs but that was just me introducing a wee bit of tempo de gallus.”
The young Macgregor had honed his skills in skiffle, a genre of music that flourished briefly some 50 years ago. Skiffle was a raw and energetic genre, noted for the use of homemade instruments such as the washboard and tea chest.
He joined the Chas McDevitt skiffle group. Nancy Whisky was the singer. The group achieved a measure of fame in Britain and the US with a song called Freight Train, but by that time Macgregor had moved on to another skiffle group, The City Ramblers.
“I joined The City Ramblers because they were playing more authentic music. I have to admit my other motivation was to get to know better the tall blonde lady who played the washboard.”
Skiffle was to be a short-lived phenomenon. “It became too commercialised and lost its appeal,” says Macgregor. “Lonnie Donegan was a great entertainer but you could say he killed skiffle.”
Other famous names passed through Macgregor’s ambit. Two unknown American singers called Bob Dylan and Paul Simon were among those who came out of the audience at a London folk club where Macgregor was resident to perform in the open slot. “The deal was that if you were any good you got
to do another number,” he recalls. “I can’t remember if Dylan or Simon were allowed a second song.”
Macgregor encountered many famous people in his career but he is not a name-dropper. “I was interested in these people as performers and individuals but I was not impressed by their celebrity. If I were, I might have got some autographs or had my photograph taken with them, but I didn’t.”
The only autograph he has is that of mime artist Marcel Marceau. “I didn’t really want his autograph but a young lady of my acquaintance was in his mime troupe and thought I would like it. I didn’t want to disappoint her. She was a lovely mime but could make a noise when the occasion demanded.”
The Hall and Macgregor partnership splintered in less than pleasant circumstances in 1981. “The first I knew was when someone in the BBC club in Glasgow told me Robin had got a job with Radio Scotland without telling me. I was upset that it was over without the chance to end in some style with a final album, a book and a farewell tour.
“I should have left Robin at least five years before. The effort of keeping the show on the road was wearing me down. Robin was leaning heavily on drink and antagonising people. We had some wonderful times, but I still feel sad about the waste of his talent.”
Robin Hall died in 1998, aged 62.
One of Macgregor’s regrets is that he did not then launch himself into a collaboration with some talented young singers and musicians. It could have been The Jimmie Macgregor Experience.
But then he would probably have missed out on career number two. With music on the back burner, Macgregor turned to writing and other creative endeavours.
The year Hall and Macgregor split, Radio Scotland sent him along the newly opened West Highland Way to make a half-hour programme. He came back with enough material for 10.
It was the birth of Macgregor’s TV and radio career as guide to the great outdoors. The West Highland Way was quickly followed by similar expeditions in Speyside, the Southern Uplands, Scotland coast-to-coast, and further afield to California, Greenland and the Arctic.
Radio Scotland signed him up for a daily programme. Macgregor’s Gathering was about music and interviewing interesting ordinary people.
“There was so much material that a lot of it went in one ear and out the other,” he says. “But some of it sticks in the memory. There was a potato merchant who kept producing spuds from his poacher pockets and telling the listeners how beautiful each one was. It was an unlikely scenario but his enthusiasm won the day.”
For 10 years Macgregor’s Gathering was an aural encyclopedia of Scottish life. In 1993 it was axed by James Boyle, the newly appointed head of Radio Scotland. Privately, Macgregor told friends there were two of them (a reference to another Jimmy Boyle, the killer turned sculptor) and he had to deal with the Boyle who was still violent.
Macgregor says: “I felt the programme was as good on its last day as it was on the first. But he was a new broom and I was swept away. I thought, why should I complain? I had enjoyed a good run in broadcasting stretching back to the 1950s.”
The BBC kept Macgregor on a retainer for a few years but did not use him, which chafed because he likes to keep busy. He never got to make programmes about wildlife, one of his passions and areas of knowledge.
He remains a skilled communicator. He can still hold an audience, as he proves with his talks, slide shows and appearances at Burns suppers.
His music has been restricted of late to informal sessions in various pubs in the west end of Glasgow, where he lives on his own, but that is about to change.
“I will be 80 but I am not finished,” Macgregor says, with defiance but also a self-knowledge that he is still able to contribute. To cut the mustard, to use one of his favourite phrases. So, look out for his one-man show – Macgregor’s life and times in anecdote and, more importantly, in song.
An Evening with Jimmie Macgregor has its first night in Kilbarchan, Renfrewshire next month. If all goes well, a tour will follow. “It is maybe time I got around to doing an autobiography, if anyone is interested,” he says.
There is certainly a wealth of material, particularly from the days when two Scottish lads singing daft Glasgow songs topped the bill. And met all sorts of interesting people.
Some of the tales are spicy. Like the member of a well-known trad jazz band who was a gerontophile. That’s a chap who enjoys liaisons with ladies of decided vintage. “At a post-concert party, this gerontophile met a woman who appeared definitely to be in his preferred age range. But he said to her, ‘My dear, if you were just a few years older, I could really fancy you.’”
